Carnist / Carnism is a slur, it is a question begging phrase that presupposes vegan ethical claims and projects a psychological motivation for non-vegan behavior in the word itself.
by definition (per joy) carnism is a psychological model that pre-supposes that animal foods are optional, and ethical deficiency is being demonstrated. the entire point of the model - language framing - is to push a vegan philosophy. If someone who eats no meat is a carnist because they use leather or own a pet - the better term is non-vegan rather then making up a marketing word to emotionally trigger people. Carnist is a term that projects a assumed thought process onto someone rather then describing behavior. Carnist is an de facto slur used to label ideologically inconvenient people and stigmatize or shame them. By design it is highly polemical
non-vegan/omnivore/carnivore (for the 4 of us here) are better terms when having discussions that are not ment to be insulting.
2 Comments
jet@hackertalks.com · 5 pts · 39d
I was watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv0xuj7m6tc - Carnism: The Psychology of Eating Animals - with the lady who coined the phrase in her dissertation, and her motivation and use of the word was quite thought provoking
at 15:30 she says "the insanity of carnism that we are born into"; which speaks to her philosophy more then a description of behavior
Then I started to dig into other critiques of the word https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316672693.001 Introduction: The New Animal Debate
this whole thing is a exercise in new-speak and to sneak in indoctrination through definitional language. Removing agency from someone is a terrible thing to do, and to do it so arrogantly is no way to have a constructive conversation.
The use of carnist is to force a philosophy onto someone else, rather then actually doing the hard work of actually looking at behaviors and philosophies. conflating one ideology onto someone else's behavior is narcissistic and arrogant.
xep@discuss.online · 3 pts · 39d
Humans eating meat absolutely is a biological fact of nature, and denying this is to deny human nature. People who use the term carnist seriously are misanthropic.